People with chronic illness who still have no real answer deserve more than this.

The biggest suffering of my life became the biggest blessing of my life.

I knew early that the system was going to leave people behind. I just did not know yet that I would be one of them.

As a fourth-year medical student in the UK, I became aware that a group of students was being pushed out of their programme. Some of them called me saying they were suicidal. I went to the Dean. He told me to delete my number. I said no.

What followed were some of the hardest years of my life. I lost medicine. The thing I loved most. I fell into a deep depression. I hit the floor.

Malta gave me a second chance. I started medicine again from scratch.

That was not the last time. The same pattern repeated. And every time, what followed was harder and better than what came before.

I do not regret any of it.

Looking back now, I would not be able to do what I do today, create the results I create today, or practise the way I practise today, if I had not gone through all of that.

Patients suffering to this level genuinely deserve a real answer. Not another referral. Not another "we can't find anything." Their loved ones deserve one too. And every day I sit with someone who has been failed by the system I was trained in, I know exactly why I went through what I went through.

This is not what I do. This is what I am here to do.

Dr Shehan Wijesingha M.D.